IC Markets review 2026: is it legit, and how good is it for MT4, MT5 and cTrader EAs?

IC Markets is one of the best-known brokers among automated traders: raw spreads with a low commission, MT4, MT5 and cTrader, and trading servers in the same New York data centre as many forex VPS providers. In July 2026 it moved its website from icmarkets.com to ic.com and now calls itself IC. This review covers its international business, IC Markets Global, and what it means for anyone running expert advisors.

We checked every fact against IC's website, its terms and independent sources in October 2026. The sources are listed at the end. IC showed us the global version of its site, which is run by its Seychelles company; clients in Australia and the EU are served by different companies with different conditions.

Our verdict: 3.8 out of 5

For running expert advisors, IC is hard to beat on conditions. Raw spreads averaging around 0.1 pips on EURUSD cost $7 per lot round turn in commission, there are no stop levels and no FIFO rule, and the MetaTrader servers sit in Equinix NY4 alongside the VPS providers many EA traders already use. It offers MT4, MT5, cTrader and TradingView, a free VPS from 15 lots a month, no minimum deposit, and the best client reviews of the brokers we've covered.

Safety is the weak side, as with every offshore broker we've reviewed. International clients deal with a Seychelles company that, by its help centre's own account, offers no negative balance protection, has no government-backed compensation and carries insurance capped at $1 million across all clients. The UK's FCA has warned that this company isn't authorised to serve UK residents, and CySEC fined IC's EU firm in 2024, mostly over helping get around EU leverage limits. Its terms also keep the right to refuse scalping orders, and its MetaTrader accounts cap open orders at 200.

Choose IC if low trading costs and EA infrastructure matter most to you and you accept an offshore company. If you live in Australia or the EU, open an account with IC's local regulated firm instead, which gives you stronger protection.

Is IC Markets regulated and legit?

IC Markets is a legitimate, regulated broker group, but the protection depends on which of its companies you deal with. International clients of ic.com, and of the old icmarkets.com, are served by Raw Trading Ltd in Seychelles. IC's website and terms give its licence as Securities Dealer licence SD018 from the Seychelles Financial Services Authority, with company number 8419879-1. The FSA's own register lists Raw Trading Ltd as a securities dealer, trading as IC Markets Global, but doesn't display a licence number, status or grant date.

From the FSA Seychelles register, ASIC's licensee data, the CySEC register, the Securities Commission of The Bahamas' list of registrants and a 2024 CMA Kenya announcement, October 2026. There is no UK-authorised IC company: the FCA lists IC Markets (EU) Ltd's former UK registration as no longer authorised.

So is IC Markets legit? Yes: it's a large broker group with top-tier licences for its Australian and EU clients and a record going back to 2007. But a client of the Seychelles company doesn't get ASIC's or CySEC's rules on leverage, client money and negative balance protection, or the EU's compensation fund. The Seychelles FSA itself says a securities dealer's licence covers business done in Seychelles, and that serving other countries needs approval from their regulators.

Raw Trading has been a member of the Financial Commission, a private dispute body, since November 2021. If IC refused to follow one of its rulings, its fund would pay up to €20,000 per client. It isn't a government scheme and doesn't pay out if a broker fails.

Regulator warnings, fines and court cases

We searched regulators' registers and warning lists, CySEC's published decisions and the IOSCO international warnings database in October 2026. This is what concerns IC itself, rather than the many fake sites that copy its name:

• CySEC fines, 2024: CySEC fined IC Markets (EU) Ltd €200,000 for taking part in activities that got around the EU's margin protections for retail CFD clients, noting a similar breach in 2021, and a further €50,000 over best execution and cost disclosure. Press reports said the first case involved leverage of up to 1:1000 offered through a group company outside the EU. IC denies both decisions, and both are under judicial review.
• UK: the FCA has warned since October 2024, last updated in August 2026, that “IC Markets Global”, at icmarkets.com and ic.com, isn't authorised and may be targeting people in the UK.
• Italy, Oman, India and Japan: Consob ordered icmarkets.com blocked in 2020, naming Raw Trading Ltd and not the EU firm. Oman's regulator lists IC Markets Global as unauthorised (2026), India's central bank includes it on its forex alert list (2025), and Japan's FSA has warned about IC companies soliciting without registration.
• Australia: a class action filed in the Federal Court in December 2023, Bain v International Capital Markets Pty Ltd, alleges that CFDs were unsuitable for clients and that IC engaged in misleading conduct. These are allegations; we found no judgment.

The FCA, ASIC, Spain's CNMV, South Africa's FSCA and other regulators have also warned about clones impersonating IC Markets, especially since the move to ic.com. Make sure you're on IC's own domain, ic.com, or icmarkets.eu for its EU firm, before you log in or deposit.

Company background

IC Markets was founded in Sydney in 2007 by Andrew Budzinski, a former compliance officer at CMC Markets, and received its ASIC licence in 2009. In 2012 it became the first ASIC-regulated broker to offer cTrader, alongside its MetaTrader “True ECN” accounts, and it added a CySEC-licensed EU firm in 2018.

In late 2025 it began rebranding as IC, first on its Haas Formula 1 sponsorship, and on 11 July 2026 moved its website from icmarkets.com to ic.com. Ownership isn't published; IC describes itself as privately owned, and we found no public registry record of the group's shareholders.

IC's international site lists no awards. We confirmed one recent award at the awarding body, TradingView's 2025 “Social Champion” broker award; most others we found were in sponsored or company-written articles. We don't give awards weight in our score.

IC Markets account types

IC's international site offers three live accounts, all with no minimum deposit, market execution, 0.01-lot minimums and a margin call at 100% and stop out at 50% margin level.

From IC's account overview and help centre, October 2026. Commission is in US dollars and applies to forex and metals; indices are commission-free. The rate differs slightly in other account currencies.

• Raw Spread on MetaTrader is the account IC itself labels for “EAs and scalpers”: raw spreads plus $7 per lot round turn. MT4 charges the full round-turn commission when you open; MT5 charges each side separately.
• Raw Spread on cTrader charges by trade value, $3 per side for each $100,000 traded, and is also the account you use to trade from TradingView. It allows 2,000 open orders, against 200 on MetaTrader, but carries only 121 instruments.
• Standard adds a 0.8-pip markup to the raw spread instead of charging commission.
• Raw Pro and Raw Pro+ are new accounts with lower commission, $1.50 and $1 per side, for deposits of $5,000 and $100,000. In October 2026 they were open for early-access sign-ups only, alongside a “Starter” account with no published terms.
• Swap-free versions of Raw Spread and Standard replace swaps with a flat holding fee after up to five grace days; for example $11 per lot a night on EURUSD and $71 on gold once the grace days are used up. IC offers them only to clients who can't use swaps for religious reasons, and may ask for proof.

Accounts come in ten base currencies, including US dollars, euros, sterling, Australian dollars and yen.

Spreads, commissions and swaps

IC publishes a table of minimum and average spreads, but the table contradicts itself: it shows Standard averages below their own minimums, and an average EURUSD spread on Raw Spread of 0.01 pips where the same page's text says 0.1 pips. We use the figures IC repeats across its pages:

Our calculation from IC's stated average Raw Spread of 0.1 pips on EURUSD and its 0.8-pip Standard markup. IC doesn't date its spread figures.

For gold, IC's help centre says the average Raw Spread spread is “1 pip”, with the same $7 round-turn commission per lot. Commission on gold is per lot rather than by trade value on MetaTrader, so it doesn't rise with the gold price. Our gold EA page explains why these costs matter so much on gold, and the pip value calculator turns spreads into money for your lot size.

Swaps are charged on positions held overnight, with triple swaps on Wednesdays for forex and metals. IC pays no interest on account balances.

Our view: Raw Spread is among the cheapest ways to trade forex on MetaTrader for an EA that trades often, and on cTrader the cost is similar. Our scalping guide shows how to check whether a strategy survives its costs.

Leverage and margin

IC offers some of the highest leverage of any broker: up to 1:5000 on forex on MT4 and MT5 and 1:1000 on cTrader. The maximum depends on the market and on the size of your position:

From IC's leverage and margin page, October 2026. Energies and crypto go up to 1:500, indices, bonds and futures to 1:200, and stocks to 1:20.

IC applies higher margin requirements at set times, when new forex positions are limited to 1:200 and gold to as little as 1:50:

• every day, from 30 minutes before the market closes to 15 minutes after it reopens;
• from one hour before the Friday close until 30 minutes after the Monday open;
• from 15 minutes before to one minute after a high-impact news release, such as a rate decision, non-farm payrolls or CPI.

These limits apply to new positions. IC's margin framework also lets it change leverage on open positions without notice. For an EA, that means a strategy that relies on high leverage may not be able to open trades at its usual size around news, the daily close or the weekend. We'd treat anything above 1:500 as a way to lose a deposit quickly; size positions by risk with our position size calculator, and check the margin a trade needs with the margin calculator.

MT4, MT5, cTrader and TradingView

IC's own mobile app handles funding, documents and support rather than trading, and its IC Social app is for copy trading. MT5 and cTrader accounts can use netting instead of hedging on request. An EA or indicator built for MT4 won't run on MT5 or cTrader; our MT4 vs MT5 guide explains the differences.

Running expert advisors and indicators at IC Markets

IC markets itself to algorithmic traders, and most of its conditions suit them. Here is what an EA or indicator user needs to know, as of October 2026:

The fine print on scalping and fast EAs

IC's website says scalping is allowed. Its terms, though, let it refuse any order “that relates to black-box trading, scalping or any similar trading practices”, require positions to stay open for a minimum time that it doesn't publish, and ban latency and swap arbitrage. IC can also decide after the fact that trading was abusive, even if it was allowed when it happened, and cancel trades or withhold profits. An ordinary scalping or grid EA isn't the target of these clauses, but a strategy that depends on price delays is.

Two practical limits matter more for most EAs. The 200-order cap on MetaTrader can stop a grid or martingale EA that layers many positions, and the 3,000-requests-a-day limit can catch EAs that modify orders on every tick. If yours does either, test it on a demo account first, or use cTrader, which allows 2,000 orders. Our grid and martingale guide covers the other risks.

Choosing the account for an EA

• Scalping and frequent trading: Raw Spread on MetaTrader, or cTrader for cBots. Backtest with real ticks and commission included, as our backtesting guide explains.
• Grid EAs: watch the 200-order cap and the margin limits around news and weekends.
• Swing and trend EAs: any account works; on trades held for days, the swap matters more than the spread.
• Testing: IC doesn't offer a cent account, but with no minimum deposit and 0.01-lot trades you can run an EA live with a small sum.

VPS and server names

IC's own VPS is free when you trade 15 standard lots a month of forex and metals (1 processor, 2 GB of memory), with larger plans at 30 lots (2 processors, 4 GB) and 75 lots (4 processors, 6 GB). Only forex and metals volume counts, and the free plan is cancelled if you miss the volume two months in a row. IC doesn't say where its VPS is hosted, but it recommends ForexVPS, whose servers are cross-connected to its NY4 servers with about a millisecond of latency. Our forex VPS guide walks through moving MetaTrader to a VPS.

The international company's MetaTrader servers start with ICMarketsSC: MT4 live servers are numbered from ICMarketsSC-Live01 up to Live33, and MT5 uses ICMarketsSC-MT5 and MT5-2 to MT5-6. Your account email tells you which one is yours. In MT5, search for “Raw Trading Ltd” to find them.

Looking for tools to run? Browse our MT5 expert advisors and MT4 expert advisors, and test any EA on a demo account before trading it with real money.

Markets and instruments

IC advertises more than 2,850 instruments, and its account comparison gives 2,250 on MetaTrader and 121 on cTrader. Its counts differ from page to page; these are the figures on its range-of-markets page in October 2026:

For EAs that trade currencies, gold and indices, every platform is well covered. If you want to automate trading on shares, you need MT5.

Deposits and withdrawals

There's no minimum deposit, and IC says it charges no fees for deposits or withdrawals, although its help centre mentions a 20 AUD bank fee when some withdrawals have to go back by bank wire. Its funding page lists 14 methods, including cards, PayPal, Neteller, Skrill, UnionPay, bank wire, Klarna, regional online banking and crypto.

From IC's withdrawal page, October 2026.

• Processing: requests in before the daily cut-off are processed the same day, but not at weekends. Each withdrawal has to be confirmed by email.
• Rules: money goes back to the method it came from, and third-party payments aren't accepted.
• Inactivity: no inactivity fee, but inactive accounts can be archived and then can't be reactivated.

Bonuses and rebates

• Deposit bonus: a 100% bonus on your first deposit, up to $1,000 according to its terms, then 50% on later deposits, up to $25,000 in total. Each bonus expires after 60 days, can't be withdrawn, shrinks in proportion when you withdraw, and can't be used for hedging. Its terms limit it to MT4 and MT5 accounts, although the web page says all platforms.
• Raw Trader Plus: commission rebates for heavy traders, from $1.50 per lot at 100 lots a month to $2.50 at 2,000 lots, with VPS access and dedicated support.

Bonus credit inflates your equity without being your money. EAs that size trades from equity or free margin will trade bigger than you intended, so set a fixed lot size or base the risk on your own deposit while a bonus is active.

Copy trading

IC offers more ways to copy trades than most brokers. Its IC Social app, built on Pelican Trading, lets you copy signal providers who can charge up to 50% of profits. cTrader Copy lets providers charge up to 40%, with cTrader keeping 30% of what they earn. IC also works with Signal Start, ZuluTrade and Myfxbook AutoTrade, and offers MAM and PAMM accounts for managers with at least $50,000 from five or more clients. IC doesn't publish minimum deposits for most of these. Past results of a copied strategy don't predict its future, and you can lose money copying.

Customer support

Support is available 24/7 by live chat, phone and email ([email protected]). IC describes its support as multilingual but doesn't list the languages; its website comes in 16. Its help centre is detailed but not always up to date: some answers, such as the VPS terms and the weekend margin rules, differ from IC's newer pages.

Is IC Markets safe?

IC is a large, established business, but an international client of its Seychelles company has much less protection than a client of its Australian or EU firm:

• Client money. IC says client funds are held in segregated accounts with top-tier banks. Its terms say client money is pooled in client accounts kept apart from IC's own money, and that IC keeps the interest.
• Negative balance protection. Not promised. IC's help centre says “you will be responsible for any negative balance in your trading account”, while other IC documents refer to negative balance protection without saying who gets it. Assume you can lose more than your deposit in a fast market. IC's EU firm does offer it to retail clients, and its Australian firm must under ASIC's rules.
• Insurance. IC says Raw Trading carries client funds insurance that pays only if the company becomes insolvent, “up to US$1,000,000 for all claimants”: a single limit shared by every client, not $1 million each. It doesn't name the insurer.
• Disputes. The Financial Commission can rule on disputes, with up to €20,000 per client from its fund if IC refused to comply. After that, the Seychelles FSA says its powers don't extend to recovering clients' money.
• Compensation if the broker fails. We found no government-backed scheme for Raw Trading's clients. EU clients of IC's Cyprus firm are covered by its Investor Compensation Fund, which pays 90% of a covered claim up to €20,000.

What clients say about IC Markets

IC has the strongest client reviews of the brokers we've covered. In October 2026, its Trustpilot page for icmarkets.com showed a score of 4.8 out of 5 from about 57,200 reviews, with 92% at five stars and 3% at one star. IC invites clients to leave reviews, which tends to lift a score. On Forex Peace Army it scored 3.54 out of 5 from about 2,170 reviews, well above the other brokers we've reviewed there, although the site noted a wave of fake positive reviews back in 2015. Note that the Trustpilot page for ic.com belongs to an unrelated company.

The complaints in recent one-star reviews repeat a few themes:

• slow or refused withdrawals, especially in crypto, often with repeated document requests;
• accounts closed or restricted without a clear reason, and bonus credit removed;
• slippage on stop losses, rejected orders and take profits that didn't fill;
• slow or templated support replies on disputes.

The praise is about fast, friendly 24/7 support, tight spreads and fast execution, with many long-standing clients saying they've withdrawn without trouble for years. Neither site verifies what reviewers say, so treat this as a pattern rather than proof. Fund your account only from accounts in your own name, and make a small test withdrawal early.

IC Markets pros and cons

Who IC Markets suits

A good fit if you:

• run EAs or cBots that trade often and need low costs, zero stop levels and fast execution;
• want MT4, MT5 and cTrader under one broker, with servers in NY4 and LD5;
• trade enough to get a free VPS, or already use a VPS in New York;
• live outside the US, Canada and the other excluded countries, and accept an offshore company.

Look elsewhere if you:

• want the protection of a top-tier regulator; in Australia or the EU, use IC's local firm instead;
• run grid EAs that need more than 200 orders on MetaTrader;
• want a cent account or a broker that publishes clear, dated average spreads;
• are tempted by 1:5000 leverage. If that's the attraction, rethink your risk first.

Want to compare? See our Vantage Markets review and RoboForex review, or visit IC and start on a demo account.

How we review brokers

Every review follows the same steps. We read the broker's licence on the regulator's own register, its client agreement and its published account terms, fees and trading conditions. We compare what the broker says with independent sources, such as regulators' warning lists and client reviews. Each fact on this page carries the month it was checked, and the sources are listed at the end.

We haven't measured live execution, slippage or spreads at IC Markets with a funded account for this review. The cost figures are the broker's own published numbers, and we say so where it matters. Spreads change with market conditions, so check the live figures in the platform before you trade.

Each category is scored out of 5 and weighted by how much it matters to someone running expert advisors and indicators:

If a broker changes its terms, we update the review and the date at the top.

Sources

All checked in October 2026. IC's pages (global version):

• Account overview, spreads and commission and swap-free accounts
• Leverage and margin and the margin and leverage framework (PDF)
• Terms and conditions and order execution policy (PDF)
• Trading servers, VPS and forex product specifications (PDF)
• Range of markets
• Funding and withdrawals
• Deposit bonus and Raw Trader Plus
• Regulation, insurance and help centre
• The move from icmarkets.com to ic.com

Regulators and independent sources:

• FSA Seychelles register: Raw Trading Ltd and the FSA's 2021 notice on securities dealers (PDF)
• ASIC licensee data: AFSL 335692 and CySEC register: IC Markets (EU) Ltd
• Securities Commission of The Bahamas registrants, September 2026 (PDF)
• CySEC decisions: €200,000 fine and €50,000 fine (PDF)
• FCA warning: IC Markets Global and Consob notice, 2020 (in Italian)
• Oman FSA unlicensed companies, RBI alert list and Japan FSA warning list (in Japanese)
• IC Markets class action (Piper Alderman) and the Federal Court class actions list
• Financial Commission: IC Markets membership and the Cyprus Investor Compensation Fund
• Andrew Budzinski (Wikipedia), Finance Magnates on the 2012 cTrader launch and FX News Group on the rebrand
• TradingView Broker Awards, Trustpilot reviews and Forex Peace Army reviews

The IC logo belongs to its owner and is shown only to identify the broker; it comes from IC's own website. The illustrations on this page are our own.